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Low energy trajectories for the Moon-to-Earth space flight

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Abstract

The Moon-to-Earth low energy trajectories of ‘detour’ type are found and studied within the frame of the Moon-Earth-Sun-particle system. These trajectories use a passive flight to the Earth from an initial elliptic selenocentric orbit with a high aposelenium. The Earth perturbation increases the particle selenocentric energy from a negative value first to zero and then to a positive one and therefore leads to a passive escape of the particle motion from the Moon attraction near the translunar libration pointL 2. This results in the particle flight to a distance of about 1.5 million km from the Earth where the Sun gravitation decreases the particle orbit perigee distance to a small value that leads to the particle approaching the Earth vicinity in about 100 days of the flight. A set of the Moon-to-Earth ‘detour’ trajectories is defined numerically. Characteristics of these trajectories are presented. The ‘detour’ trajectories give essential economy of energy (about 150 m/s in Delta V) relative to the usual ones.

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  1. Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, Miusskaya Sq. 4, 125 047, Moscow, Russia

    V. V. Ivashkin

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  1. V. V. Ivashkin
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Ivashkin, V.V. Low energy trajectories for the Moon-to-Earth space flight. J Earth Syst Sci 114, 613–618 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02715945

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